Space-age fashion legend Paco Rabanne has died

Legendary fashion designer Paco Rabanne has died at the age of 88. The announcement was broadcast on Instagram this afternoon with a statement from the house, reading: “Paco Rabanne wishes to honour our visionary designer and founder who passed away today at the age of 88. Among the most seminal fashion figures of the 20th century, his legacy will remain a constant source of inspiration. We are grateful to Monsieur Rabanne for establishing our avant-garde heritage and defining a future of limitless possibilities.” 

Born Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo in the Basque region of Spain, the designer revolutionised fashion by twisting unconventional materials into new and previously unexplored forms. His brand – synonymous with the optimism of the 60s – was built on sculptural microminis, crafted from bolshy paillettes of aluminium, which mined medieval armour for its space-age potential. Though Cuervo’s avant-garde sensibilities were perhaps a matter of inheritance (his mother worked as the head seamstress for Cristóbal Balenciaga) they were honed at the école Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he began to sell plastic buttons and jewellery to Balenciaga, Elsa Schiaparelli, Hubert de Givenchy, and Roger Jean-Pierre. 

Dogged in his desire to break with convention, Cuervo was one of the first designers to cast models of colour and soundtrack his fashion shows to music. He debuted his first collection (Twelve Experimental Dresses) in 1964, followed by his breakout collection (Twelve Unwearable Dresses) in 1966 – both of which made full use of the postwar, industrial materials at his disposal, with pieces crafted from wire and glue. He’d say that “sewing is a bondage” and sell DIY kits to his clients – among them Peggy Guggenheim, Brigitte Bardot, and Françoise Hardy – so they could fashion their own chainmail from discs, rings, and pliers. Those designs, worn by Jane Fonda in Barbarella, have proven a well of inspiration for Julien Dossena, who took over the Paco Rabanne label in 2013.

Though Cuervo treated fashion as a reaction against the polemics of his day – dressing women in armour needs no explanation – he was a futurist, untethered to the everyday. He retired from fashion in 1999 and while his fragrance imprint continued to be a commercial success, it wasn’t until 2011 that Paco Rabanne (the brand) staged a comeback. Since then, the house has cycled through creative directors Manish Arora, Lydia Maurer, and Dossena, who is compounding Cuervo’s experimental outlook and chain-link innovations – albeit with a less outré bent.

“I am deeply saddened by the passing of Mr Paco Rabanne,” said Marc Puig, chairman and chief executive officer of Puig (which now owns the label). “A major personality in fashion, his was a daring, revolutionary and provocative vision, conveyed through a unique aesthetic. He will remain an important source of inspiration for the Puig fashion and fragrance teams, who continuously work together to express Mr Paco Rabanne’s radically modern codes.”